I have been tearing through Shane Claiborne’s The Irresisible Revolution again. I read most of it while I was at Koinonia, don’t know why I never finished it, but I was borrowing it and didn’t have the cash at the time to buy my own copy. I have been wanting to get it again, and my amazon order for it just arrived Friday. I am about three quarters finished and twice as inspired as I was before. Inspired and confused.
Since I have arrived in New York, I have been in a state of general grumpiness and dis-ease, and through reading this book, I am begining to understand its source. I remember a conversation I had with Bren Dubay one morning at The Open Door Community in Atlanta where I said I didn’t know if I could go back to living a life of materialism. Living as a part of a community provided a number of freedoms that i have come to miss. One of them was time, and a space in my spirit that was normally taken up by scurrying about worring about paying rent and bills and getting here or there on time. is this the way “the man” keeps us quiet? This cycle of wanting more and more causing us to work more and more so much that we become complacent and closed off to the fact that things are pretty fucked up in our world.
So yeah. Now I am in New York City, and I love this city, but I see my life filling up in ways that will keep me from doing what I feel called to do, but then, what exactly is it that i feel called to do? Living at Koinonia was the closest I felt to connecting with my activist/spiritual needs. But even though I felt so connected spiritually there, and so close to the members of the community, I had a hard time with feeling disconnected from the rest of the world. Here in New York, it’s the opposite….so far. I am really connected and surrounded by people of all types, but I am rapidly losing the time and energy to connect with what my spirit needs because of the overriding need to find work.
The grumpiness? How in the hell do I get both of these extremes fed?
Claiborne makes such a strong case for Jesus in this book, which is saying alot for me to say something like this. I was sitting on the bus yesterday and had a crystal clear understanding about Him: “When I look past my judgements about Christians, following Jesus seems like a pretty reasonable thing.” I twittered it in that moment, and a couple of people responded in negative ways. Why is it so un-cool to have repspect for Jesus? The Jesus that people like Claiborne, Clarence Jordan, Dorthy Day and company speak of is so different from what our culture would lead us to believe. I think this is all I can put into words about any of this right now, but I will continue. I really want to pay a visit to The Simple Way community in Philly. For the first time ever, I am feeling open to Christianity.
